Proletariat
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The proletariat (ultimately from Latin prōlēs "offspring") is the working class of capitalist society. A member of the proletariat is often called a proletarian or "prole" for short.
While proletarians are, unlike slaves and serfs, not bound to any particular master, they also do not have any significant property of their own, and therefore tend to lack significant means of production. Therefore, the proletarians can only subsist by selling their ability to labour as a commodity on the market for purchase by the owners of the means of production, or bourgeoisie. The resulting relation of production is called wage labour. The price of their labouring power is called wages and is determined by the cost of reproduction of the class of labourers as a whole; that is, the average wage at which the necessary number of workers can continue to survive and fulfil their needs.
In the early 19th century, the progressive political economist Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi coined the term proletariat to refer to the new class of labourers which had begun to expand in developed Europe. As early as the 1840s, Karl Marx adopted Sismondi's term and predicted that the proletariat would continue to expand as a class at the expense of the middle class and the peasantry. Marx argued that as capitalist society continued to polarise itself into owners of huge means of production and propertyless, unbound labourers, the unavoidable resolution of this contradiction was a social revolution in which the labouring proletariat would collectively seize the means of production and bring about a society which lacked the class distinctions created by the existence of private property—a communist society.
Ancient society
Although the proletariat only became the dominant working class around the time of the Industrial Revolution, free legal citizens without any significant property of their own have existed in various societies throughout history.[instances needed] The term itself was adapted by Sismondi[citation needed] from the Latin prōlētārius, a term used in the Roman Republic to refer to the poorest among the plebeians. Because of their lack of wealth, they were ineligible for military service and only notable in census records for producing children. This offspring, however, was significant because they could later become free citizens of newly conquered territory. The Latin word for "offspring" is prōlēs, and hence the people who did nothing much but produce them were called prōlētāriī, meaning "those who produce offspring."
After the Marian military reforms of 107 BC, proletarians were allowed to serve as disposable skirmishers in the Roman army. This turned the Roman military from a militia composed of wealthy citizens with a stake in the Roman state to a professional army loyal mainly to their military commanders, who were their main source of income. In this way, the rise of the Roman proletariat opened the way for the achievements of Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire.
Capitalist society
Origin
Because of the agrarian nature of feudalism and the small-scale, petit bourgeois nature of most production at the time, the proletariat hardly existed as a class in feudal Europe. The proletariat developed in earnest during the period of land enclosures beginning in the 16th century[citation needed] in which the ruling classes forced the smallest of peasants off of their land and compelled them to find work in the cities. At the same time, technological advancement allowed industrial production to develop, which destroyed the livelihoods of small craftspeople such as weavers. The new industrial bourgeoisie made use of these dispossessed peasants and craftspeople to labour in their factories, and the growth of industry in turn allowed capitalists to outcompete more and more small producers. This cyclical process took off in England in the late 18th century, triggering its Industrial Revolution and meteoric rise as a global power.
Marx termed this process "primitive accumulation" in reference to a concept in the political economy of Adam Smith and others:
Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living.... Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property.... In actual history it is notorious that conquest, enslavement, robbery, murder, [in short] force, play the great part.
— Karl Marx, Capital Volume I, Ch. 26: The Secret of Primitive Accumulation[1]
Expansion
Modern day
Conditions
Proletarianization
As production in countries becomes more and more industrialized and advanced, the various petit bourgeois classes and peasants of the world are absorbed, mostly into the proletariat (although some lucky few will climb to the ranks of the bourgeoisie). The result is that the central contradiction of capitalism, that between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, sharpens. Imperialism and colonialism are both methods to further this process and integrate more proletarians from Africa, Asia, and Latin America as capitalism is forced to expand.
See also
References
- ↑ Marx, Karl. "Economic Manuscripts: Capital Vol. I - Chapter Twenty-Six". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 5 Sep 2023.